


Clearing Up a Misunderstanding

by Philosopher_King



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Age Difference, Conversations, Discussion of age difference, Episode: s05e15 By Inferno's Light, M/M, Matchmaking, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28118727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: Filling in the conversation between Garak and Ziyal after he returns from imprisonment in the Gamma Quadrant.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Tora Ziyal, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 15
Kudos: 65





	Clearing Up a Misunderstanding

“Ziyal?”

She turned and spotted him, and her eyes lit up. Garak closed the distance to her table and she stood, a smile breaking over her face like the sun scattering thunderclouds over the desert.

“I told you I’d be back,” he said with a smug little smile of his own.

She breathed out a laugh of pure joy… and then launched herself at him and threw her arms around him. He saw her leaning in for a kiss and dodged so that it landed on his cheek just to the right of his lips rather than on them. “I never doubted it,” she said fervently, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

Garak briefly let his cheek rest on her smooth coiffed hair and sighed uncomfortably. She had exiled herself here for his sake; he should have been hard with her sooner, so that she could have gone back to Cardassia with her father and been safe, under the protection of the Dominion. He owed it to her not to leave her with vain hopes any longer.

“Ziyal, my dear,” he said gently, and just as gently laid a hand on her shoulder to push her away. “Let’s sit down and talk for a moment.”

“Of course,” she said, her eyes still shining with happiness.

“What are you drinking? Red leaf tea? I’ll have one as well.” He raised a finger to catch Quark’s eye; at first the Ferengi looked as harassed as he usually did whenever a customer presumed to ask something of him, but then his eyes widened and an expression that looked like relief came over his face. Garak called out his order, and received a nod and an unusually sincere “Right away, sir” in response.

“Will you tell me what happened in the Gamma Quadrant?” Ziyal asked, her brow creased with concern.

“I will, and soon… but first I must clear up a misunderstanding. Please do not mistake me,” he said, quiet but firm. “You are a lovely and remarkable young woman, and I admire you greatly. But…”

“Is this about my father?” she broke in shortly.

“What about him?”

“You and he are enemies; you believe my grandfather was a traitor. Is that why you don’t want to be with me?”

Garak put his hand over Ziyal’s on the table and clasped it gently. “I would be the last to hold someone responsible for the sins of their parents… and that goes for your father as well; he has given me ample reason to dislike him on his own demerits, quite apart from anything his father may or may not have done.”

“Then what’s the problem?” she asked, somewhere between a challenge and a plea.

Garak’s tea arrived, momentarily sparing him from answering that question. He nodded his thanks to Quark and wrapped both hands around the mug, warming them against the chill of the station, before he raised it to his lips.

“Garak?” Ziyal pressed, ending his reprieve.

Garak sighed. “My dear… I am old enough to be your father. Not only that; I am the very same age as your father. I am very fond of you, but as a father to a daughter, or a mentor to a young protégée in whose success he has taken an interest… not as a potential lover.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “I’m not that much younger than Doctor Bashir.”

Garak blinked. “I’m not sure I would consider twelve years ‘not that much younger’ when it is more than half of your current age… but even if it were true, I don’t see how the age of my other protégé is relevant.”

“‘Protégé’?” Ziyal scoffed. “I’ve seen how the two of you look at each other. Even if you’re not involved now, you must have been at some point.”

“Indeed?” Garak asked, affecting arch amusement. “Do tell me the history of our doomed love-affair.”

“I don’t know _why_ it ended. Maybe you fought too much; he’s not a Cardassian, maybe he doesn’t like it as much as we do. Or maybe he was afraid it would hurt his career if someone found out he was sleeping with a Cardassian spy. Or… maybe he got a little _too_ into one of the women he was flirting with as cover?”

“This is all quite fascinating, Ziyal. Have you considered a career as a writer of romance novels, or perhaps romantic spy thrillers? I understand that it can be quite lucrative, especially if you sell the rights to adapt them into holosuite programs…”

Ziyal leaned back in her chair, away from him, and folded her arms. “Don’t play games with me, Garak. Even if you never actually slept with him—for whatever reason—I _know_ you’re not averse to taking younger lovers.”

Garak sat back and raised his eye ridges. “Granting, for the sake of argument, that I do take that kind of interest in the good doctor—how do you know that I did not refrain from acting on it _because_ he is so much younger than I am?”

Ziyal considered this point for a moment. “Well, it still gives me something to work with. I can persuade you that you _shouldn’t_ hold yourself back from taking a younger lover if that person is an adult, and is equally interested and willing.”

“You don’t think that a significant age difference creates an imbalance of power that would complicate the relationship—especially if the relationship of mentor to protégé is already established?”

“I think that if you’re both adults, you can figure it out. And you’ll both know when the difference in authority does and doesn’t apply.”

“You make compelling points, Ziyal.”

“Then you’ll think about it?” she asked with anxious hope.

“About striking up an affair with Doctor Bashir?”

Her mouth fell open in dismay. “No—with me.”

“Oh, my dear.” Garak reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and she jerked it away.

“I stayed for you,” she said with quiet fury. “I still love my father, but I let him go for _you_.”

Garak sighed and closed his eyes in pain. “I know, Ziyal, and I wish you hadn’t… but what’s done is done. At least now you know who your father truly is.”

“He did what he thought was best for Cardassia,” she said tightly.

“I know, and I can hardly blame him for that, though we differ considerably in our views of what is best for Cardassia. What I _do_ blame him for is disowning his own daughter because of his antipathy toward me.”

“He did it out of loyalty to his father.”

“…who is dead, and will remain dead. He has sacrificed his family’s future to its past, which cannot be changed.” He sighed and put a comforting hand on hers, which was resting on the table again, and this time she did not pull away. “At least this way you can help me fight for Cardassia’s freedom from the Dominion.”

She nodded, but when she closed her eyes she looked like she was fighting back tears. Garak could not in good conscience reassure her about their fortunes in the war, or about her chances of seeing her father again. If the Dominion attacked the Alpha Quadrant, Deep Space 9 would be its first target, and its inhabitants were unlikely to survive (unless he could persuade her to take refuge elsewhere in the Federation or in a neutral system)… and if the Federation and its allies were victorious, Dukat would undoubtedly be executed for collaborating with the Dominion.

With little else to say that would be comforting, Garak said, “I meant what I said: you are lovely, and brave, and intelligent. I do not doubt that you will find some dashing young Starfleet officer—perhaps even our own Cadet Nog; he has grown into a most promising young man.” Ziyal made a face at that suggestion, so Garak added, “Or the Captain’s son, Jake; maybe he can help nurture your budding talent for fiction.” Ziyal scowled even harder. “Or perhaps an open-minded young Bajoran will learn to see beauty in these ridges,” he said, lightly tracing a fingertip over the raised line of scales above her eye.

Ziyal caught his hand and held it against her cheek. “Why can’t _you_ see beauty in them?” she asked plaintively.

“Oh, I do,” he said. “But that beauty is not for me.” He gently withdrew his hand and folded it with his other on the table.

Ziyal sighed and looked down at her own hands. “Why _did_ you never… get involved… with Doctor Bashir?” she asked. “Assuming you didn’t…”

Garak put on an expression of wistful regret. “Unfortunately, humans are not as enlightened as we Cardassians are about relations between persons of the same sex.”

Ziyal frowned. “Really? That doesn’t fit with what I know about the Federation…” She broke off, still frowning, while Garak smiled at her blandly. “You just made that up, didn’t you?” she accused him.

“Not _made up_ , exactly… it was true three centuries ago.”

Ziyal rolled her eyes, then tilted her head to the side, thinking. “It was Tain, wasn’t it?”

“What was Tain?” Garak asked innocently.

“The reason you and Bashir never… _haven’t_ gotten together… _yet_.”

Garak cocked his head. “Is that an attempt at matchmaking I hear?”

“Maybe.”

“You recover quickly from romantic disappointment. That will serve you well in life.”

“I never said I wasn’t still disappointed… but I’ll take my compensations where I can get them.”

“And you would consider it a… compensation if I were to establish my relationship with the doctor on a new footing?”

“Believe it or not, Mr. Garak, I want you to be happy. I’d prefer it if you were happy with me… but I’d still be happy to see you happy with someone else who feels the same way about you as I do.”

“And you believe that Doctor Bashir feels the same way about me as you do?”

Ziyal gave him an exasperated look. “You worked for the Obsidian Order. It was your _job_ to be able to read people, and his feelings are written in huge red letters all over his face.”

Garak inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, well… I don’t trust my eyesight nearly as much when I have a personal stake in what the text says.”

Ziyal grinned. “I can always check it for you, old man.”

“Ah, you have backed me into a conversational corner. If I protest that I am not so old as all that, you will tell me that I should have no objection to taking _you_ as a lover.”

“Well? What will you do—advance or retreat?”

“I have knocked down my king, Ziyal—will you not allow me to surrender with dignity?”

She frowned in puzzlement. “You’ve done what?”

“A metaphor from chess—a game from Earth that Doctor Bashir taught me, in exchange for learning to play kotra.”

“Kotra does not permit surrender until the last piece is taken.”

“The Cardassians are a merciless people.”

“And I am half Cardassian. So, Garak?”

He sighed theatrically and raised his hands. “Thank you for assisting an _old_ man, Miss Ziyal.”

She smirked. “It’s a good thing you’ll have a _doctor_ on hand, isn’t it?”

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I realized that in the first version I put in a reference to Bashir's genetic enhancement, but that doesn't become common knowledge until the following episode. This is what happens when you binge a whole season of a show in less than a week -- the timeline sort of blurs together. I fixed it.


End file.
